Is China Gaining A Lead In The Tech Arms Race?

Welcome back to the Foreign Policy Status Report! Jack and Robbie are there. This week, we have special guest Rishi Iyengar to help us understand the US-China tech competition.

Hope everyone on the east coast is having a great week with the smoke from the wildfires in Canada. (Wednesday was the third-worst wildfire pollution day in U.S. history.) Here are some tips on what to do outside as the smog drags on into Friday.

Well, here's what's happening today. China could win the AUKUS team in an international technology competition, Cuba agrees to host a new Chinese spy base, Sweden takes a step towards NATO membership, and more.

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The technological importance of the AUKUS alliance for China is endless. And the result is just not good.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a Canberra-based think tank, has analyzed 23 technologies that could hold the key to the second pillar of the AUKUS alliance, based on hypersonic weapons, quantum technology and cybersecurity. Other new technologies.

A new study by the Australian Organization found that China had an advantage over AUKUS countries in 19 out of 23 critical areas. And this is no small advantage.

"China's leaders in hypersonics, submarine capabilities and electronic warfare are so clear they pose a significant threat to China's dominance of future technological advancements in these areas," ASPI said. in a press release announcing the dashboards. "The strengths of the three AUKUS countries put them in close competition with China in nearly half of the technologies they seek, including quantum communications, advanced data analytics and machine learning."

The report caused a stir in Washington, where everyone seems concerned about the US-China technology race, which could determine which side will prevail in an era of great power competition.

But there is. While China can pour more money into high-impact national security research without strict regulatory mechanisms like Congress, AUKUS partners aren't winning everywhere. “The collective strength of AUKUS countries will change this image and take global leadership” in areas such as autonomous systems, advanced robotics, reverse engineering, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, writes Asb.

Friendship is rare, and it will be more interesting. "A slightly larger group of countries would change the situation even more," the think tank added.

And plenty of room to chat. Other experts are not happy with the ASPI attributes in this report and say they fall well short of what the Group America report indicates. The Australian Think Tank methodology measures high-impact research by collecting and analyzing the top 10% of critical technology papers. Among partners in the United States and outside of academia, they believe ASPI has missed out on a lot of innovation and entrepreneurship.

"Outcomes in public research are not the same as innovation or leadership in technology capital," said Emily Weinstein, a research fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technologies, who focuses on US-China technology competition. "Research is only one way to assess a country's innovation potential, but it must be considered in combination with other measures, such as patents or investments in that country and in that sector. particular technology."

And it may be too early to say who is responsible. "Basically China has more people, so obviously they're going to publish more articles," Weinstein added. "For me, China is at the forefront of quantum technology, so it's hard to argue because the technology is not fully developed. If it's new technology, it hasn't been established and is still very difficult to identify."

A “thaw” between the United States and China? The debate is set against the backdrop of a broader struggle in Washington over how to handle relations with Beijing and find ways to ease short-term tensions.

And for what it's worth, the Biden administration wants you to keep all your Cold War metaphors to yourself. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has finally extended his visit to China in the coming weeks after a spy balloon flew over much of the United States and Canada in late January and early February. President Joe Biden has pledged to encourage the "de-escalation" of relations between the two superpowers. And US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns told Wire China this week that China is showing strong interest in resuming economic talks.

But Washington's warm words are (sort of) taken with a grain of salt in Beijing, as our colleague James Palmer wrote in a China Brief this week (another FP newsletter you should subscribe to if you don't do it already). Because Chinese President Xi Jinping wants to dominate the United States and there are fundamental misunderstandings about how Washington works. China's leaders are "inexperienced in the separation of powers and the multiparty system, so they don't realize how confusing and divergent American decisions are," Palmer wrote.

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U.S. Navy Sgt. Major Carlos A. Ruiz has been named the next sergeant major of the Marine Corps. Ruiz will replace Sgt. Major Troy E. Black, leader of the Devil Dogs.

Joel Linnainmäki, a former adviser to Finland's top diplomat, is a researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, a think tank focusing on Finnish foreign policy, NATO and Northern European security.

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What should be high on your radar, if not.

The last piece of the puzzle. Western defense officials and diplomats told Sitrap that Sweden will join NATO this summer, raising hopes that this round of NATO expansion could end the conflict as much as Turkey's. What will Sweden's NATO membership mean for the alliance? We have what you need. Lazy click on a link? Here's a quick rundown: Sweden's presence in the alliance makes it much easier to send military assets to NATO's vulnerable Baltic wing to begin with. Geo-strategically, adding Sweden to the alliance would turn the Baltic Sea into a "NATO lake", rendering the Russian Baltic Fleet redundant. Sweden also has the largest defense industrial base in the Nordic region, and NATO officials are eager to bolster Europe's dwindling munitions stockpile.

Cold War Cuban Crisis 2.0. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union took advantage of its relationship with Cuba and its proximity to the United States, especially during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Now Washington's new geopolitical rival, China, appears to be trying to do the same. According to the Wall Street Journal, China has struck a secret deal with Cuba to host a spy base on the Caribbean island to monitor potential targets from US military installations in the southeast. (Remember: US Southern Command is based in South Florida.) History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes, doesn't it?

It has no end. Fighting between warring factions in Sudan's capital Khartoum has continued to escalate after repeated attempts by the United States and Saudi Arabia to broker a ceasefire agreement failed. The Sudanese Armed Forces, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, are fighting for supremacy over pro-government forces led by General Mohamed Hamdan “Hemeti” Dagalo. We have already written about how Sudan was the shining light of the international democracy movement and how it fell when war broke out in April; This is due to the mixed US diplomacy. Now Burhan's forces are fighting to defend a sprawling military-industrial complex south of Khartoum, holding large amounts of equipment and ammunition, the latest sign that the conflict could escalate into civil war. The humanitarian devastation of the power struggle between these two commanders was shocking.

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Today, US Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to the Bahamas for talks with Caribbean leaders. Meanwhile, Mr. President Joe Biden received British Prime Minister Rishi Sunan at the White House.

In Saudi Arabia, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will address a meeting of the international coalition to defeat the Islamic State.

Wednesday, June 14: Dan Kreitenbrink, the State Department's top Asia official, testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee just days after returning from China. He is the first senior Biden administration official to visit China in months.

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"I'm thinking about being in the PGA."

- US President Joe Biden responded to the golf giant's announcement of a merger with Saudi-backed LIV Golf during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

"They're trying to do good in the world and show themselves in a light that hasn't been seen in a long time. Nobody's perfect, but we're all trying to make life better."

- The golfer who joined Saudi-backed LIV Golf became the first rookie to speak about the PGA-LIV merger on CNN when asked about Saudi Arabia's role in the journalist's murder Jamal Khashoggi and other human rights abuses.

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The enemy of my enemy? The conflict between Russian military forces in Ukraine is escalating. Wagner's team of Russian mercenaries captures a self-proclaimed Russian lieutenant colonel and forces him to confess on video that he drunkenly ordered Russian soldiers to fire on Wagner's forces.

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